The Vanishing of Katharina Linden (31 page)

It was not possible simply to stand there and peer at Stefan through the darkness. Disheartened, I went to stand on Herr Düster’s doorstep, where the slight recess offered some meager protection from the snow. I glanced up and down the street; all was still and silent. I couldn’t help but wince at the
clink
of the chisel on the padlock. Even if Stefan managed to get the padlock open, it was going to be blatantly obvious what we had done.

Hugging myself, I leaned against the door. Like the rest of the house, it was old and uncared for. The wood felt rough and weathered under my touch. As well as a newish metal lock there was still a brass doorknob, tarnished with age, and underneath it the old keyhole, the worn edges giving it the appearance of a toothless old mouth. Without really thinking about what I was doing, I slid my freezing fingers around the doorknob and gently turned it. With an audible
click
the door opened.

For a moment I stood there dumbfounded, with my fingers still gripping the knob. Herr Düster’s house yawned in front of me, the interior a black pit.

“Stefan.”

“What?” came the reply, in an irritable stage whisper.

“Stefan, the door’s open.”

“What?”

“The door’s open.” I heard him get to his feet and a moment later he was by my side.

“What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. It just opened. He can’t have locked it.”

“Mensch.”
Stefan sounded impressed.

“Stefan—maybe he’s at home.”

“No way. Frau Koch said he’d gone.”

“So? Maybe she’s as big a storyteller as her grandson.”

“Come on—does it
look
like anyone’s at home?”

“No-o-o,” I said doubtfully, but looking around the street none of the houses looked any livelier than Herr Düster’s; all were utterly dark. He gave me a little push. “Go on.”

“You go first,” I said, not moving.

I heard an impatient little sigh, and then Stefan had brushed past me and entered the house. It was inky black inside, and almost immediately I heard a
bump
followed by a smothered exclamation.

“I’m going to put my flashlight on,” whispered Stefan, fumbling for it.

“Someone might see us.”

“Someone will definitely
hear
us if I don’t.”

There was a tiny
click
and a small circle of light appeared, traveling slowly over a heavy oak cupboard, its front panels carved with twining leaves and prancing stags, a section of faded wallpaper with an indistinct design of foliage, an old-fashioned clock whose metal face was spotted with tiny patches of rust. There was a smell on the air of dust and old furniture polish.

“What’s that?” I whispered as softly as I could. Stefan let the light move up the wall until it illuminated the thing I had glimpsed; it was a wooden crucifix, the metal Jesus on it contorted in pain.

Stefan said nothing, but let out a little sound like a sigh. He swung the flashlight around and the yellow beam drifted through the musty air like a phantom, touching without touching. We were in a narrow hallway, the wooden floor overlaid with a shabby-looking runner, the walls lined with dark blocks of furniture. Directly ahead of us the wooden staircase began. The treads were worn, and the newel post, carved into the shape of a face peeping out from a nest of leaves, had a dull shine that I suspected came more from the touch of many hands over the years than from polish. The beam of light moved on and the peeping face was swallowed in the darkness once more.

To the left of the staircase the hallway continued farther back, but from where we stood the light was insufficient to do more than suggest a doorway at the end. As Stefan completed the sweep with the flashlight, I saw there was also a door to our immediate left, a stout wooden door, firmly closed. Just the living room, of course—it could hardly be some kind of Bluebeard’s chamber, facing onto the street as it did.

All the same I was losing my taste for investigation. In the pervasive gloom it was difficult not to imagine the absent Herr Düster still lurking within, perhaps hunched in a high-backed armchair in the dark, like a lobster concealed within its cave in the rocks deep under the black water, nothing visible but the dull gleam of a carapace and the two shining beads of eyes.

Stefan reached for the handle, and with infinite care opened the door. We slid cautiously into the darkened room. Inside, it was an obstacle course of standard lamps and cabinets and chairs. The same depressing smell of dust and old polish permeated everything. From the little detail that I could pick out by flashlight—the fringed edge of a lampshade, the claw foot of a chair, the dull gleam of a pewter plate—it looked as though the room hadn’t been redecorated for many years. The reflective glint of glass showed that the walls were crowded with framed pictures, though it was possible to see what they were only by training the light directly on them.

I wondered what the friendless Herr Düster used to decorate his house. Fumbling for my own flashlight, I switched it on and examined some of the nearest pictures. They were all photographs, but old ones: some of them were sepia, and had the soft-focus effect at the edges that some very old photographs have.

A portrait shot of a young woman in old-fashioned clothes caught my eye; hers was the only genuinely pretty face among the collection of stolidly respectable subjects with long upper lips and indignant eyes. I stared at her for a moment, wondering whether this was perhaps the Hannelore about whom Frau Kessel had gone on at such length, but looking at the style of her high-necked dress and her upswept hair, I was doubtful. Wasn’t this picture too old to be her?

I was still contemplating the photograph when I heard a
thump!
somewhere behind me. I whirled around as though I had been stung.

“Stefan, can’t you—?”

He didn’t let me complete the sentence.

“Shhhhhh.”
He stretched a hand out toward me, as though warding something off.

The next moment he switched off his flashlight. “Switch yours off too,” he hissed at me.

I hesitated. The thought of being plunged into darkness was not a
pleasant one. Stefan had no such qualms; he took a couple of steps nearer, plucked the light out of my hands, and switched it off.

“What—?”

“Shut up.”
His voice was so emphatic that I did shut up, and for a few moments the pair of us stood there in the darkness, listening.

“Stefan?” I whispered eventually. “That was you, wasn’t it?”

“Shhhhh,” came the reply, then: “No. It came from upstairs.”

“Up—?”

Realization trickled through me, momentarily robbing my limbs of the power to move.
Scheisse, Scheisse
, boomed my thoughts incoherently. I almost staggered, then grabbed Stefan’s arm, trying to pull him with me toward the door, knowing even as I did so that if someone—or
something
—was to come down the stairs at that moment, we could never get out of the house without passing within an arm’s reach of it.

Stefan stood his ground, and the fingers of his free hand closed around my wrist with surprising strength.

“Stay still,” came the whispered words out of the darkness.

“No—” I twisted like a landed fish in his grasp.

“He’ll hear you.”

That was enough. I froze. Then from somewhere above us came another muffled sound, as though someone had dropped something on the floor. I could not help myself; I struggled to break away from Stefan.

“Keep still,” hissed an agonized voice. “Your jacket—”

He was right; with every movement the fat arms and body of my down jacket rubbed together with an audible rustle. I clutched Stefan in panic. “What are we going to do?” I whispered.

“Get down. He might not come in here.”

It was a slim hope, but I couldn’t think of a better plan. We squatted down on the worn carpet, so that a heavy armchair flanked by a little table with a lamp on it shielded us from the doorway. I felt for Stefan’s hand. His fingers closed around mine gratefully. We waited.

For a brief moment I had entertained the hope that all we had heard was Pluto, springing down from some favorite sleeping spot onto the floor above. But now I could quite clearly hear footsteps moving across the room above our heads. There was a scraping sound, as though someone had moved a piece of furniture slightly, and then the sound of the
footsteps changed and I realized that whoever it was must have moved out onto the upstairs landing.

I put my lips close to Stefan’s ear. “He’s going to come downstairs.” I was near to tears.

I felt Stefan’s breath on my cheek, and then his voice said very softly, “Stay here.”

No
. The moment I realized that Stefan meant to move I was flooded with panic. Suppose he managed to make a break for it and left me here, trapped in the house with the monster? I made a grab for him, with an alarming hiss of fabric rubbing fabric, but I was too late. As swiftly and silently as a cat, he had risen and slipped toward the door. Now that my eyes had adjusted to the dark he seemed painfully visible.

A moment later I heard the first creak as someone put a heavy foot on the topmost stair. Smoothly as a dancer, Stefan slipped behind the door, which stood ajar. His head turned and I guessed that he was looking through the vertical crack by the hinges.

Inexorably, the footsteps came on down the stairs, each one as heavy and final as a prison door closing, the wooden treads protesting under the weight. Kneeling on the floor, I curled my hands around the claw feet of the armchair, clenching them into fists as though trying to anchor myself against a storm.

I squeezed my eyes shut in an agony of suspense, but it wasn’t possible to close them against the series of images that seemed to be running in my head on an eternally repeating loop: a girl of my own age, light brown plaits bobbing as she ran down the street with her
Ranzen
on her back, running into nowhere; Frau Mahlberg screaming hysterically for Julia; Herr Düster hiding out after the war in the ruins on the Quecken hill, coming back to his lair at daybreak with the blood of slaughtered chickens on his lips. I was really afraid that I might wet myself, so intense was my terror; I squeezed my thighs together, the muscles rigid under the fabric of my jeans.

There was a final creak and then a more muffled
thump
as whoever it was stepped onto the worn runner in the hallway. There was a pause, and then the footsteps moved slowly down the hall. At any moment they must pass the door.

I opened my eyes again, and could clearly see Stefan still poised behind it, absolutely motionless. Whoever had come downstairs was
carrying a light of some kind: the crack between the door and the frame showed as a dim yellow streak. I saw Stefan lean back toward the wall slightly, trying to make himself invisible.

The door
, I thought suddenly: the door had not been open when we entered the house, and now it was ajar. Too late to do anything about it now; I ducked my head, trying to compress myself into as small a space as possible, in case the unseen person in the hallway looked into the room.

The footsteps passed the door. There was a slight hitch to them, as though whoever it was had hesitated, perhaps seeing that the door was ajar. But the next moment they had passed it, and I heard the front door open, then softly close.

I sagged forward, my body loose with relief, and let my forehead rest upon the shabby seat of the armchair.
Thank you, thank you
was all I could think. I heard Stefan’s light footsteps approaching and the next moment I felt his hand on my shoulder. His flashlight clicked on too close to my face, making me wince.

“Are you OK?” said his voice close to my ear.

“I think so.”

With an effort I sat back on my heels. I felt peculiar; my lower jaw seemed to have taken on a life of its own and was quivering as though I were about to burst out crying. “Stefan?” Even my voice sounded strange, vibrating as though I were trying to speak while being driven over rough ground.

“It’s OK.”

“I want to go home.”

There was a silence. Finally, Stefan said, “Pia, I think he’s locked the door.”

“What?” My voice rose wildly. Careless now of being heard, I began to succumb to panic.

“Calm down,” said Stefan quietly. He put an arm around my shoulders.

“He can’t have locked the door,” I babbled. “I didn’t hear him lock it.”

“Pia,” said Stefan in the same low voice, “I don’t think he had a key.”

“That’s
Quatsch.”
I said eagerly. “He can’t have locked it.” I tried to push Stefan away. All I could think of was getting to my feet and getting out of the house.

“He
did
lock it,” said Stefan.

Shaking my head, I got up and went to the door as quickly as my cramped legs would allow. I looked into the hallway; the door certainly was closed. I ran to it and tried the handle. Stefan was right. It was locked. I tried it again, rattling the handle violently, putting my shoulder against the door and shoving as hard as I could.

Intransigent as a barricade, it refused to budge an inch. In desperation I kicked the bottom panel, then fell back, panting. Silently Stefan came to stand by me.

“I can’t open it,” I gasped.

“I know.”

Before I could stop myself, I had struck him on the shoulder with the flat of my hand. I could not understand how he could be so infuriatingly calm.

“We can’t get out!” My chest was heaving. Fear and frustration were buzzing through my body like toxins. “He’s locked us in. He’s locked us in. Herr Düster—”

“Pia.” Stefan put out a hand to ward off another blow. “It wasn’t Herr Düster.”

“What do you mean, it wasn’t Herr Düster?” I was beside myself. “Who was it then?
Verdammter
Dracula—?”

“It was Boris,” said Stefan.